


The Sea of Notes and Normality

by Melladosia



Category: Every Note Played
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-01
Updated: 2018-06-01
Packaged: 2019-05-08 10:03:13
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14691900
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Melladosia/pseuds/Melladosia
Summary: Richard Evans, a country-wide famous classical pianist, has since developed ALS. The harsh moments of silence that fill his ears in the loneliness of his world cause him to reflect on what he has lost.This is a short story inspired by Every Note Played by Lisa Genova that I won an award for narrative writing and a place in the paper on.





	The Sea of Notes and Normality

Every day.

Everyday was difficult, embarrassing, and outright theft of my rapidly dwindling masculinity. Every time i had to be assisted in changing, in eating, even in going to the bathroom- the disease that overtook my body laughed me in the face. It told me stories of my past, where i faced great success as a musician of New York- one whom would one day be admired by bored middle school trumpet players or anyone who bothered to know I was anything other than a statistic of ALS. 

It giggled as it began running up my arms, paralyzing them. Without my fingers to delicately play Bach, my marriage with the piano was over, a young love story ended too soon. Then the disease decided that maybe it’s like my legs, too. Only one at a time. Slowly. So that in my final days of walking, I was not running marathons. Instead, it was a struggle merely to reach the kitchen.

Next came my ability to independently breathe. By this time, daily life was already lived in a wheelchair. If that wasn’t difficult enough, at night I was hooked up to BiPAP, a machine which held my hand in the usual tasks of inhalation and exhalation to survive to see the sunrise. 

I think a lot. Too much. Overwhelmingly. My mind is the refuge my body refuses to be. What the piano used to be.

“What do you miss the most?” ALS taunts me. “Breathing? Eating? Walking?” 

I take no time to reply to the foul villain. “Piano.” I croak. ALS smiles at me before it turns to leave-not my body, no, but my brain- leaving me alone to the desolate thoughts it provided. 

“I think you miss normality.” It hisses with yellow teeth and foul breath. “Normal people don’t need help using the bathroom. Normal people don’t need BiPAP or feeding tubes or eight hospital visits a month. You are anything but normal. I’d even say you’re useless.” With that, it disappears, and I cry out, feeling a sharp pain in my spine. 

I ache to feel the keys of the piano beneath my tired, overworked and outdone fingers. I want the keys to sigh as I turn them into an unforgettable melody, a wave of notes, a flood, drowning out the voice of ALS. But I am not strong enough. I am not strong enough to bring a flood, or to scream, or to even lift a finger. I am utterly powerless. Every vein in my body feels exposed, as if I were suddenly turned inside out.

I have been told that thinking too much is dangerous. That I will suddenly get an idea that I don’t need BiPAP or that i can walk and I will be hurt attempting to convert back to the religion known as normality. Without my brain, I am nothing. My body is here on this earth, beating, pumping, attacking and paralyzing, but my mind delves beneath the surface. If I have been robbed of my beloved piano-playing fingers, of my marathon-running legs, of my formerly muscled arms, then I will install a security alarm to keep out the intruders attempting to claim my brain.

I gaze around the room. Sunlight filters in through beige satin curtains. This is the same sun I gazed up at whilst laying in the mud at seven years old. This is the same sun I prayed to for luck as I headed off the college on a scholarship. The same sun I looked at with a cursed mind while undergoing my divorce, while playing Bach on a stage for thousands of people, while standing up and bowing and smiling. 

During all of these times, I was normal.

I wish I knew what normal was again.

 


End file.
